How can you miss something you never really had?
by Howlinchickhowl
Summary: The same pain, experienced in four different ways. M for language
1. Finn

**Title: How can you miss something you never really had?**

**Part 1 of 4**

**Prompt: Parents**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one**

**Finn**

His dad's picture lives by his favourite armchair. His ashes live in an urn on the mantle. When he says live, he knows they're not like, alive, but he thinks it's nice to think of it like that. Like his dad still lives in the house with them, just in a different way to other kids' dads. It's not true, obviously, he's not a moron or anything, but it's just a little bit of, what would Rachel call it? Self-indulgence, or something. He just likes to pretend sometimes.

He and Puck first bonded over their mutual lack of dad. It was at a little league game when they were kids, all the other kids' dads were there, but Finn's mom and Puck's mom were there by themselves standing on the sidelines cheering their kids on.

"Dude, where's your dad?" Puck had tossed at him as they sat, sweating in their gear under the blazing sun.

"Oh, he's not here. We keep him in a jar at home, so that he won't blow away or something."

Little Finn was sorta stupid, but Puck seemed to get it anyway, he didn't make fun of him at least, just kind of grunted.

"Where's yours?" Finn asked back when he realised Puck's dad wasn't there either. Puck got this creepy kind of smile on his face, the Puckerman smirk he's come to know it as, but back then it was kind of just a sneer.

"He blew away." Puck had said. Finn had nodded, he felt bad for the guy, he'd feel bad if his dad blew away, that's why they kept him in a jar.

Finn now knows the truth about Puck senior's disappearing act, but sometimes he thinks it's kind of the same as his dad. Maybe even kind of worse, cause at least he still has the jar, and the chair and the photo of them together. Puck doesn't even have that. Not that he should really care what puck has or doesn't have. Guy's a complete asshole.

It's just that, it's something that they'd always shared, something they'd kind of joked about together. And without Puck to keep him cracking wise, he's finding it's not really so funny anymore. He doesn't have like a _dad_ man. You know? Like, that's huge. And he never really realised it because Puck didn't have a dad either and they kind of stuck together with that. But now he's like, alone, and he keeps thinking, a dad would have been really goddamn handy to have had around when everybody he knew was lying through their teeth to him and he had no fucking clue.

A dad would have been really handy to have around when he was trying to deal with his, like, arrival issues, and fuck it, yeah, when he was learning to drive as well. Although if he'd had his dad teaching him to drive he probably would have never hit the mail-main and then he would have had more trouble, you know, with the other thing.

He loves his mom, she's totally awesome, with the whole Quinn thing and letting him give up homework cause he was too tired to do anything, but she is, without question, a mom. She's all soft and calm and comforting words. He thinks what he's really been needing, what he's totally missed out on in his life, is something hard. Someone to tell him to pick himself up instead of doing it for him. Someone to tell him he's being a complete dick to people he actually cares about and that using girls because they let you and you need what they have is not cool. Someone to tell him he's actually just a moron and that there's absolutely no _freakin_ way you can get a girl pregnant if you've never even gotten underneath her cheerio uniform.

Someone who would have taught him how to be like, a man, or something. But all he had was his mom, and a stupid urn filled with ashes that probably weren't even his dad's anyway, and a photo from when he was a baby, and how is that any help? It's just not. At all. If he's gonna be a man, he's gonna have to figure it out for himself.

He just can't stop himself from thinking that trying to be a man was a lot easier when Puck was standing next to him, trying to be one too.


	2. Rachel

**Rachel**

She loves her dads. Honestly she does. More than anything on the planet, probably. They're so kind and generous and they love her to pieces and she knows they'd do anything to make her happy. She's always had everything she could ever want – they never just gave things to her though, she had to work for everything, Rachel Berry would understand the value of the things she wanted if she was going to get anywhere in the world – and she thinks she probably loves them more for that, because now at least she can demonstrate that she's not completely spoilt, and point to her color-coded chore chart to prove it.

But sometimes – just sometimes, when it's quiet and it's dark and she's just lying there with her thoughts and wishing she could be just a little less abrasive, a little more _likeable_ maybe – sometimes she wonders, very quietly to herself, what it might have been like to have had a mother.

She wouldn't want to replace her fathers, she needed them both too much! But a mother would have been a nice thing to have as well, she thinks. Maybe they'd only have seen each other every couple of months, or maybe they'd only converse by email or the telephone, but knowing that she had that there, a _mother_, that would have been helpful, probably.

Her fathers have taught her many things; The importance of being organised and of always keeping your goals in sight. Her mother would have taught her how to take too long getting ready and the value of getting sometimes _distracted_. Her fathers have provided her with dance training and a sense of proper attire for a young lady. Her mother would have taught her how to dance like an idiot, or maybe even seductively when the time came, and would have bought her first pair of skinny jeans and the perfect high heels to go with them.

Her fathers have instilled in her a deep sense of virtue, of doing always what is right, and the power that comes with having the full force of the ACLU on your side. She thinks her mother would probably have shown her what it could feel like to break the rules every once in a while, if the situation called for it, and the how to flirt with police officers so they wouldn't give you a ticket.

She knows that this is all slightly ridiculous, and that this imaginary woman who would have shown her all these amazing things about life would never have been in existence. She's just too pretty, too cool, too everything. But all of that stuff doesn't really matter anyway. Sometimes she thinks it would be enough, just to have had a _woman_ to talk to. To tell her how to relate to other girls, or how to talk to boys without telling them off, or what to do when you think a boy likes you because he pushed you down in the playground and everyone says that that means it's love. Her fathers just told her to push him back if he did it again and that he was just jealous of her talent. Naturally she believed them, they were her dads, and she was very talented, but when she told the boy that he just called her a stupid big-nosed freak and pushed her back down.

She thinks that if she'd had a _woman_ to talk to she might, at least, just have _one_ friend. A real friend, not the members of glee club who she knows full well only tolerate her because they can't win without her. But a real friend, a girlfriend, to go shopping with and get ice cream with (she'd make a dairy exception once a month if her best friend insisted) and gossip about boys with. One friend, that's all she'd ask for.

But she never had that, a mother. And she'd never had a real friend. And the one boy she could maybe have called her boyfriend was having a baby with someone else, and even she wasn't that delusional.

She loves her dads more than she could ever express. And she is so thankful for their nurturing and support of her obvious outstanding talent, and she would never give them up for anything. But sometimes, she thinks, it might have been nice to just be normal for a while.


	3. Puck

**Puck**

Truth is, he doesn't care about his dad not being there. He doesn't. He gets looks sometimes, from other kids at school, from the women at temple that his mom stands around and blathers with after service, from his teachers, from the guy at the 7-11 (ok that one's probably just him being defensive but all the others are totally giving him looks).

It varies; the kinds of looks he gets, depending on what he's doing at the time. If he's shoving some dweeb into a locker on his way to not going to English class, and some teachers happen to be nearby, often its disapproval mixed with this air of, it was bound to happen. Like, given who his father is, what he did, how could his son not turn out to be an asshole? Fuck them.

If it's after temple and he's waiting on his mom to stop chatting and he's just hanging out by the car entertaining his sister by like, throwing sticks around or dancing about with her or whatever else stupid shit he does to keep her from whining at him like she's three instead of a fully functional nine year-old, and all these women who go to the same synagogue as them happen to be nearby, mostly he gets pity, and/or affection. _Would you look at that poor Puckerman boy, had to grow up so fast, had to help raise that little girl when he was just a kid himself_. Fuck them too.

Kids at school are mostly just afraid of him. People don't look him in the eye unless he tells them they can; he thinks that's pretty cool. But there are obviously a few exceptions, mostly people he's known since way back when. Kids from little league and that totally gay Jewish community centre day-care thing he used to have to go to when his mom was working double shifts. They're mostly scared of him too, but sometimes when he's beating someone up or throwing someone in a dumpster and that someone is not them, he'll see them out of the corner of his eye and he'll see his least favourite look, understanding. They've known him forever, they knew him before his dad left and they've known him since and they act like they fucking _understand_ what he's like, _going through_, or whatever. Fuck them the most. Seriously. Assholes.

With her it's kind of different though. He sees her looking when he does dumb things, or sometimes, back when he used to slushy her, he'd catch her eye right after, and she's not looking at him like she understands. She's looking like she doesn't understand. Like she has no idea what happened to make Noah Puckerman, the kind of sweet kid she used to know from youth group turn into this complete douchebag who threw frozen corn syrup in her face practically every day. That look is like, his fucking kryptonite or some shit like that, because it's like, she's the only person who thinks he shouldn't be this guy. She's the only person who doesn't just fully expect this shit from him. Well, she probably totally expects the slushies, they're like, a regular occurrence and he knows she brings spare clothes to school. He just means that it seems a lot like it still surprises her that he's the one doing it. Which kind of bugs him, but he doesn't hate her for it, cause he thinks maybe it's nice, having someone expect something of you every now and then, even if it is completely unrealistic shit like being nice to her or something like that. He guesses it means she thinks there's hope for him.

But the point is, his absentee father figure? He totally doesn't care. Does he wish that his mom didn't have to work so much, or that she didn't occasionally just burst into tears for no apparent reason? Sure, who wouldn't wish that. Does he kind of feel bad that his sister never had anyone to put her on his shoulders and show her what it felt like to fly, or teach her how to whistle or buy her sweets without their mom knowing? He supposes that would have been good for her, coz really, a girl needs a father more than a guy does, and he was too young for most of that stuff, and by the time he'd thought that she might want to learn how to whistle, she'd picked it up anyway from some kids at school, so that kind of went out the window.

Yeah, it would have been nice for his mom and for Sarah to have had the old man around, at least until Noah was old enough to take care of business, instead of being 8 like he had actually been and not knowing what to do with the crying woman in his living room or the wailing toddler in the room next to his. But did he miss the guy for himself? _Hell no._ Fuck that noise.

Yeah he'd had to grow up a bit faster and get a job and look after Sarah and shit like that. But it had made him a fucking _man_. A serious stud of like, epic proportions or some shit. The job had meant Cougars which meant really nasty (_awesome_) sex followed by homemade lemonade and cookies, who the hell wouldn't love that? And Sarah was pretty cool when she wasn't whining at him. Once he got her to shut up and just hang out she was actually kind of badass for a nine year old. She still loved Disney princesses or whatever, but she was almost as good at Super Mario Brothers as he was, like together, they were a totally awesome super-plumber tag team. So that was a pretty cool thing that came out of not having a dad, because he was fairly certain that if his dad had been around he wouldn't have been able to spend so long teaching her all the controls and stuff like that.

So he totally hasn't suffered for not having a dad. He managed to learn how to play ball and scam girls and throw punches all by himself, with some help from Finn when he wasn't pussying out of like, _everything_, and he really just wishes people would stop _looking_ at him like it was some major fucking problem that they had to deal with on his behalf. He was doing _fine_.

His mom thinks that he doesn't know how to treat women properly, which, if he thinks about it, he guesses he can see where she's coming from. But she's wrong. He _knows_ how to treat women properly. He just doesn't bother. It's so much easier his way; Easier to reel them in, and infinitely easier to spit them out. Case in point, the one time he made any effort at all for a girl, with the being nice and the singing of lame (_awesome_) Neil Diamond songs and the walking around school like a fucking lapdog, he pretty much ended up on his ass, in the dirt (metaphorically speaking) cause he ended up getting like, _dumped_ or whatever. Once again, fuck that noise.

So thanks Ma, when he finds a girl who's worth it he'll totally treat her like a queen, but high school girls just aren't worth the two hours spent with the jazz band, who are all totally giant dorks. Nor are they worth the humiliation of almost getting caught stealing baby books from the local borders because you're trying to convince your baby-mama to not give your spawn to complete strangers but you don't want to have wasted dip money if it doesn't work.

Secretly he thinks maybe both of those girls might have been worth it, if he'd been better at it. Because one of them he's wanted forever and she's carrying his child and he should have been able to man up for that and give up other women for at least one night. And the other one looks at him like she believes in him and she kind of deserved better than being used for her Judaism. Sometimes he thinks maybe if he'd had a dad to sound this stuff out to, just for ideas as to how to handle things, he might have ended up with at least one thing he'd wanted, instead of having no girl, no baby and no best friend. But then he thinks that he's probably just drunk, and the old man wasn't good for anything anyways. Screw that train of thought thank you very much. He'll get there (where?) eventually, when the timing's right.

But when Quinn finally goes into labour and he's stood in the hospital room holding his baby girl, it's the first time he thinks she's probably right about giving her up. Because as much as he thinks they ended up doing alright, him and his mom and his sister, he can't help thinking that it might have been nice, to have a dad. And he's a dad now, and he thinks part of being the dad that he wants to be is putting his little girl first and keeping her safe and making her happy. He thinks she's probably not gonna be either of those things if he insists on keeping her, because he can't seem to stop wrecking everything in his life. And if he wrecks her like his old man wrecked him he would never be able to forgive himself. So he signs the papers Quinn puts in his hands, and turns her over to her new parents. And for the first time in like, ever, he's actually genuinely proud of himself.


	4. Kurt

**Kurt**

He misses his mother pretty much every day. He has this picture of her from his parents' honeymoon that he keeps in his hope chest, she's got this smile on her face that always makes _him _smile, and he likes to take it out and look at it when he's upset, because it's almost like she's still taking care of him.

He never got to know his mother, not like you're supposed to. When you get to the point where they start to see you as actual people and tell you things about themselves that you'd never have considered them doing because they're your parents, and, what else is there? And then you start to see _them_ as real people. He never got to do that with her.

His dad talks about her sometimes. Usually it's at one of those times when he just doesn't know what to say to whatever it is that Kurt's just said, but he knows that his wife would have had the right words, so he thinks that if he just talks about her for a while, the right thing will come to him. It doesn't often work. But it usually ends up making them both feel better anyway.

She sounds like a pretty cool lady, really, from the things he knows about her. She loved to sing and dance, and just generally make a spectacle of herself, he remembers his dad telling him that it's no wonder really that Kurt turned out so flamboyant. She hated Mellencamp with a passion, and sister, Amen to that. She liked to go shopping and try on things she could never afford, but spend a whole afternoon having the shop assistants bring her coffee and model things for her. The more he heard about her, the more he really thinks he would have totally loved her.

Not that he doesn't love his dad. His dad is really great, and he really tries hard to make everything ok and to not be bothered by Kurt's overly fabulous sense of style or the fact that he'd rather listen to Lady Gaga than Bruce Springsteen. But he can't help but think that if his mother were here she wouldn't have to try to make everything feel ok, it just kind of would be, and it would be easier for his dad as well.

Thing is, his dad's always telling him how much he's like her, like it's some kind of lifeline between them. Like if Kurt knows that he's like her, and he knows that his dad loved her, then he has to know that Burt loves him too. And he does know that, he does, in his head he knows that. But that doesn't stop him from feeling like his dad wishes he were more normal. Like he'd really just like someone to talk girls and football with, and sit and have a beer with on Sundays. And Kurt really wishes he could be that guy for his dad. Really just wants to be sometimes. It aches, knowing that he's not really what his dad wanted in a son, and it doesn't matter that he knows that he loves him, he still feels like a disappointment. It's really quite painful.

And it's not fair either. It's really not fair when his dad tells him that he's like his mother, because he knows she was the strong one, and that means his dad thinks he's the strong one too. And he's just not. Not at all. He's not strong enough to keep them together when he's pretty much falling apart himself. He's not strong enough to let his dad know that it's ok that he's not dealing with all this particularly well when all he wants to do is yell that it's _not ok_! It is, really. But at the same time it's not. It's not his dad's fault, and he knows that Burt would never think like this, but he always feels like he has to keep apologising for who he is, as if he deliberately chose to make their lives difficult.

He can't be strong, but he can't show his dad how hard he's falling either, because he doesn't want him to worry. So he throws a solo that he really _badly_ wanted, that he _deserved_, because it's on him now, to make it better. And he had to live with the smug look on Rachel Berry's face and the pity in Mercedes'.

So yeah, he misses his mother, all the time, because he shouldn't have to deal with this stuff. He has other stuff to deal with, like being in love with a quarter back who's in love with a girl who's having a baby with his best friend who's basically a man whore and isn't that difficult enough?

He never got to know her like he should have, so he doesn't really know that everything would be better with her here, if he's being completely honest with himself it would probably just be a different version of the same thing, but he misses her all the same. And at night before he goes to bed sometimes, he'll make a wish and kiss that picture of her, and hope that one day he'll wake up and she'll just be there, that she'll always have been there, and this is all just some ridiculous nightmare he'd concocted for himself after eating too much sugar.

No matter how many times he makes that wish, when he wakes up she's still gone.

The end


End file.
